Nigeria’s public health institute said on Wednesday that it had identified the variant in three travelers who arrived from South Africa in the last week, Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, its director general, said in a statement.
The institute, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, had said earlier on Wednesday that it had also detected the Omicron variant in a sample from October, but then retracted that announcement. The earlier sample was of the Delta variant, according to a message shared on WhatsApp by the institute’s spokesman, Emeka Oguanuo.
Referring to the three Omicron cases, Dr. Adetifa said in the statement: “Follow up to ensure isolation, linkage to clinical care, contact tracing and other relevant response activities have commenced.”
Nigeria is the third country in mainland Africa — besides South Africa and Botswana — to report the variant, which is now known to have reached every continent except Antarctica. But scientists say it could be weeks before more is known about how transmissible the variant is, the severity of illness it causes and how much protection the current vaccines offer against it.
